In his brief preface to The Life, Music and Thought of Woody Guthrie, editor John Partington explains that this book came about in an attempt to call attention to music as part of utopian studies. This prompted him to put together a “scholarly appreciation of Guthrie,” which in his view illustrates the hopefulness of Guthrie's music. There are recurring themes in the book – from Guthrie's optimism and patriotism to his identification with workers, hobos, and outlaws – that are clearly worth exploring. Mark Allen Jackson's chapter on the legend of Jackhammer John, for example, deepens our understanding of Guthrie's views about work and workers. But the volume as a whole is frustrating because too much of it is based on a misreading or neglect of the political and cultural context in which Guthrie wrote and performed. While the book offers some fascinating glimpses into the wealth of material in the Woody Guthrie Archives and the variety of ways in which his work could be interpreted, the lack of an introduction putting this new scholarship in perspective detracts considerably from the collection's overall impact.

The book is divided into three sections: “Songs as Diagnosis and Cure,” “Creating an Icon,” and “Partnering and Siring” (this may seem to some to smack of gender bias, along with the fact that every contributor to the book is male). Will Kaufman's chapter, “Woody Guthrie and the Cultural Front,” is one of the few that “situate[s] him as part of a broader cultural movement in spite of his legendary maverick individualism” (36). Too many other chapters, however, fail to do this sort of contextualizing, leading to conclusions that are confounding. The first chapter, for instance, says, “Despite Guthrie's sympathies with the CPUSA, his outlook was in many respects compatible with those of the New Dealers” (13). The second chapter suggests that “Guthrie's ideology, far from being communistic, appears a simple humanism” (32). In posing “Marxism” against “democratic idealism” (14), “a revolutionary agenda” against “the humanism of the New Deal” (32), these authors miss the spirit and activities of the communist left in that era. (Think of Pete Seeger singing “Jefferson and Liberty,” or Paul Robeson performing “Ballad for Americans.”) Especially in cultural circles, a sympathy for both communism and the New Deal hardly represented a “strange mixture” (14), as leftist musicians and artists participated wholeheartedly in recovering and creating American folk (and folk-style) compositions. While it is going too far to suggest that these musicians were simply following Communist Party chairman Earl Browder's pronouncement that “Communism is twentieth century Americanism,” it makes little sense to leave American Communism out of the story altogether (as does the chapter on Guthrie's antifascism).Footnote ¹

A few chapters explicitly challenge the association of Guthrie's legacy with the left, but these are equally problematic. For example, the chapter on Guthrie's identification with hobos casts them as social critics and patriotic Americans (93), and points out that Guthrie not only criticizes and resists but also “celebrates American values, American landscapes” (97) and freedom. Again, this is a characterization that would apply to many left-wing artists and musicians in the 1930s, and yet the chapter ends by castigating the “New York intellectuals” for limiting Guthrie's legacy and stripping it of his patriotism. The next chapter, by Jeff Morgan, indicts one individual, folk music collector and promoter Alan Lomax, for restricting Guthrie's public image. In order to support his point that Guthrie longed to be appreciated as a “populist visionary who spoke to the ‘everyman’ of the everyday realities of America,” Morgan cites what he calls “one of Guthrie's most revealing memoirs.” It begins, oddly enough, with a quote from Mike Gold, a communist journalist and cultural critic: “Woody, as many know, has become one of the true voices of American folk song. For years he has traveled the roads with his guitar and made up ballads about American life and sung them everywhere” (103). As if quoting Gold to indict Lomax is not confusing enough, a later chapter by Ed Cray completely contradicts the portrait of Lomax as manipulator.

If there is a serious scholarly debate to be had about the substance and construction of Guthrie's legacy – and here is where an introduction to the volume would have been really helpful – Frank Erik Pointner's chapter on “This Land Is Your Land” and Ron Cohen's piece on Guthrie's relationship with Will Geer present a contrary view to the chapters discussed above. Pointner argues that “This Land” is a “rebel anthem” that has been coopted and that Guthrie's legacy “has been distorted by those in power” (128), a direct counterpoint to the chapter on Lomax, which Morgan frames as a challenge to the “static ‘radical’ model of Guthrie” (100). Cohen emphasizes the importance of Guthrie's support networks and relationships. Surely we can appreciate Guthrie's utopianism without having to make him larger than life, take him out of the cultural movement of which he was a part, and stereotype (or ignore) the communist left, which helped shape his music but was also very much affected by it.